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terminal burrowing in the land of the warhorses

they do not hover with vague threatening airs
but lord over breathing molten curses
she is so small but wills herself to be tiny,
invisible so the march of terror cannot reach her

hiding in the hollows of mud slick passages inked with blood
she senses their intentions, unearthing all the way to the borderlands of death
grotesque mutations lumbering, slurping as they spew
their low grumbling croaks insinuating into her being

starving and cold, scathed and tattered, she is still scrabbling
searching for the way forward, each movement unbearable
unable to swallow, driven by hate for their foul injustice
huddled in shadows she daydreams of the sanctuary
embroidering another beautiful tale to soothe

startled from the reverie by the howl of grizzled hunger, stabbing pain
she hasn’t progressed but burrowed further into the crevice
wondering if anything exists beyond this fetid land of warhorses
or is it only the febrile poetry of her mind, spinning fantasies
awaiting an end that mercy may never bestow

Honestly…the title had me shaking in my boots and the write did not disappoint. I know well the desire to make oneself invisible, the shrinking…pulled at my heart strings something terrible. Completely swept away by the imagery, as always, but the dark undertones give it an appeal that would more than welcome wild ones…always amazing Anna…and I’m always so tempted to scrap mine and start again after visiting!

Oh, I’m sorry, don’t scrap your poetic child on my account; that would be a tragedy! I wanted the title to put it all out there, I went a little more Pan’s Labyrinth than Where The Wild Things Are but this is what welled up this morning after hearing about the prompt. I too know the horror of trying to become invisible so it is good to know it came across well. I’m sorry to hear you know it, I wanted to tackle real monsters today.

grotesque mutations lumbering, slurping as they spew
their low grumbling croaks insinuating into her being

goodness gracious anna are you trying to give me nightmares? smiles….really great imagery in this…ugh i feel for her and where she is and wanting to shrink and hide away…and even in the hoping or wondering if there could be anything better out there…this is a bit of my adolescence…

No, just exorcising some of my own. I empathize with her too so I let ‘her’ write it out today. I’m saddened to hear you experienced some of this in your adolescence, but happy to know you found a way out. Thanks Brian.

Yes, too much fantasy can lead to real dangers both in childhood but especially as we grow up and have to face even more of life’s difficulties. On the positive side I see it as the birthplace of our art. Thank you, that’s very kind of you to say.

Wonderful imagery! I want to go to your imaginarium. I felt like this was a child in a war-torn place, looking for escape from the horrors of just trying to survive. But I have to admit… the second stanza made me see zombies!

The only way to get away from an awful place is to imagine a far better one. A place where one should be, somewhere one actually comes from or belong rather than the current reality.

I can see how the terrible reality is more concrete, more vivid and specific in description, so one kinda knows the child didn’t cross over in any way but is still hiding, still conjuring that better place in her mind. The beautiful place is more telling than showing, well illustrating that wish to be over there. It is entirely fantastic to extremes, but I think the more terrible the situation, the more opposite of it it is on the other side. Nonetheless to the child, that other place is real and she is cruelly stuck on this side.

Yes, “When the soul wishes to experience something she throws an image of the experience out before her and enters into her own image.” – Meister Eckhart

I love that you noticed the contrasts between the reality and fantasy sections, and the necessity of the extremes. This was absolutely written from the child’s point of view with the understanding of fear and fantasy from her perspective which is colored by her psychology. I was also thinking about all the children who don’t make it to the other side, that die from neglect, hunger, or war.

Fantastic Anna. The 4th and 5th stanzas are excellent. Great storytelling throughout, really changes gears, twice, the first ,2nd and 3rd, the 4th and 5th, and then the 6th, perfect storytelling structure, packed with imagery and variety. Thanks

Thanks Fred, I thought a lot about the structure. Initially I tried to rewrite another poem to fit the prompt but couldn’t get a strong narrative to work there so I started from scratch but kept the imagery generated from the mind of the little girl.

Anna- what a great poem! Capturing the scary side of a child’s imagination- maybe a metaphor for how children can sometimes see the outside world- everything can be a big baying horse….this was so imaginative- and the language you used shifted so eloquently between the nightmarish and the beautiful…perfect tempo and words for each different and contrasting setting

Thank you Stuart, your comments are always so helpful. I felt the initial shift could be a little gradual but the second needed to be sudden, great to know that worked for you. I wanted to present it from the psychology of the little girl, I initially cast it as a persona poem but the limitations of language were burdensome so I tried to settle on something in between, retaining the imagination of the child with the logic of the adult to construct something that would speak to the reader (adults).

I don’t know why children suffer so horribly. They are the first victims of inhumanity, it seems. Stories in the news about violence against children brings tears to my eyes. It is a terrible crime, and people should be punished accordingly, as though they are hurting an adult. Your poem is rich in detail and resembles an alien world though it is sadly the one we inhabit.

It truly does, and how rending. I remember when I worked in healthcare risk management and we had to refuse care to a woman who had killed her two adopted children. She only served 5 years in jail, which I felt was such an injustice.

I connected so much with the sense of fear in this child, trying to hide herself away to avoid the monsters. Knowing something awful is out there, and maybe coming for you, but having no way to avoid it. Nicely done, and so many wonderful words in there too!

This pulled at my heart strings… these images of profound beauty and then the haunting darkness… very well done, very much in the vein of sendak. you made me want to hug and protect that child… fight off those warhorses.

You know, Anna, I went for the second time to Warhorse last night. I would not have gone twice but I was taking someone I knew would like it. It is kind of hokey in many ways==the story is a bit sentimental–but the puppetry is unbelievable==just great, and the way that devastation is conveyed is very powerful. If you have a chance to see it, you might enjoy.

I’m talking about the stage play not the movie. The stage play has these life sized horse puppets. k.

The book is a children’s book, and the movie has real animals. What’s remarkable about the play is that they use horse puppets the size of real horses, and actually have people ride them. I think the show is only in New York or London. k.

Robert Anton Wilson

Semantic noise also seems to haunt every communication system. A man may sincerely say, ‘I love fish,’ and two listeners may both hear him correctly, yet the two will neurosemantically file this in their brains under opposite categories. One will think the man loves to dine on fish, and the other will think he loves to keep fish (in an aquarium).

Witold Gombrowicz

“Here is the writer who with all his heart and soul, with his art, in anguish and travail offers nourishment – there is the reader who’ll have none of it, and if he wants, it’s only in passing, offhandedly, until the phone rings. Life’s trivia are your undoing. You are like a man who has challenged a dragon to a fight but will be yapped into a corner by a little dog.” Ferdydurke

I’m an Executive Director with a doctorate in education, a consultant, painter, photographer, composer, poet, and vocalist.

Gustav Flaubert

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

Dušan “Charles” Simić

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

Monique Wittig

"Language casts sheaves of reality upon the social body, stamping it and violently shaping it... Language as a whole gives everyone the same power of becoming an absolute subject through its exercise. But gender, an element of language, works upon this ontological fact to annul it as far as women are concerned and corresponds to a constant attempt to strip them of the most precious thing for a human being - subjectivity. Gender is an ontological impossibility because it tries to accomplish the division of Being. But Being is not divided. God or Man as being are One and whole. So what is this divided Being introduced into language through gender? It is an impossible Being, it is a Being that does not exist, an ontological joke, a conceptual maneuver to wrest from women what belongs to them by right: conceiving of oneself as a total subject through the exercise of language. The result of the imposition of gender, acting as a denial at the very moment when one speaks, is to deprive women of the authority of speech, and to force them to make their entrance in a crablike way, particularizing themselves and apologizing profusely. The result is to deny them any claim to the abstract, philosophical, political discourses that give shape to the social body. Gender then must be destroyed. The possibility of its destruction is given through the very exercise of language. For each time I say 'I' I reorganize the world from my point of view and through abstraction I lay claim to universality. This fact holds true for every locutor. "

W.S. Merwin

All the things that really matter to us are impossible...Writing poetry is impossible. I don't know how to write a poem. A poem - there has to be a part of it that is not my own will; it comes from somewhere that I don't know. There is so much that comes out of what we don't know and what we don't have any control over. I think that one of the only things we can learn as we get older is a certain humility. - from Doing the Impossible, Yes Magazine, Issue 59

Thomas Aquinas

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.